Is This Really Investing? Or Just A Scam?

Many Americans were surprised when it was announced that Mark Cuban’s crypto bet that he’d been hawking for months had collapsed. But the bigger question would tie to one of Mark Cuban’s recent quoteas to what makes an investment have inherent value:

“The intrinsic value of anything--a Bitcoin, an ounce of gold, or a share of GameStop--is simply what people believe it is. Nothing else matters.”

This statement basically claims that all investing is simply just a scam and there’s no numerical value to anything. Do you believe that?

The stock market has made believers in this axiom as values tie back to absolutely nothing

Just consider the rise and fall of Tesla stock. The company at one time was valued higher than all the other seasoned car companies in the world combined – even though it had never posted a profit since inception. Obviously, that’s nuts. And now the stock has fallen around 40% recently simply because people are starting to get scared that they were investing like drunken sailors and still in the absence of any negligible earnings. And even though the stock has fallen by 50% and Tesla has meager earnings, the stock market still gives in a market capitalization value of $800 billion. And there are a multitude of stocks with this same story: zero earning and huge values. So maybe Cuban was right?

The single-family home market has also not helped

Picture a home in Denver, Colorado that was valued at $1,400,000. Then it fell when mortgage rates increased to $1,000,000 – just a few months later. Again, it has all the marks of the Cuban quote in that the value was not tied to any financial metric but simply what people thought at the time. That’s been true for homes across America for a decade now. It’s just perception, nothing more.

It’s a depressing concept

When you remove financial performance from investing all you end up with is speculation and gambling. You might as well go to the track or the casino. There’s no strategy or effort and everyone is effectively a sucker. If that’s what investing has become, then who wants to invest? You would literally be better off taking all of your assets in cash and burying them in the yard. At least that way you don’t lose 50% or more. The stock market has effectively turned into a huckster’s paradise.

Income real estate IS completely based on … income

There is at least one investment that actually has a foundation rooted in financial performance and anchored by monthly cash flow and that’s the mobile home park. They are sold based on a cap rate (net income divided by cost) and measured by actual formulas of cash-on-cash, cash-flow and debt coverage. All of these tie to actual performance, not speculation and Cuban’s concept of “whatever you can convince somebody something is worth”.

Conclusion

If you are investing in mobile home parks then you are basing decisions on actual math. And if you buy most everything else at this point you are simply another sucker hoping to find the greater fool. If you really think that investing is nothing but gamesmanship by con artists, then you should fully expect to get the same result as Cuban’s crypto catastrophe.

Frank Rolfe
Frank Rolfe has been an investor in mobile home parks for almost 30 years, and has owned and operated hundreds of mobile home parks during that time. He is currently ranked, with his partner Dave Reynolds, as the 5th largest mobile home park owner in the U.S., with around 20,000 lots spread out over 25 states. Along the way, Frank began writing about the industry, and his books, coupled with those of his partner Dave Reynolds, evolved into a course and boot camp on mobile home park investing that has become the leader in this niche of commercial real estate.